Random thoughts from a carpetbagger living in the Great Republic of Texas

Friday, March 8, 2013

Bigfoot Prefers Not to Be Found

A while back I wrote about my
late-night television guilty habit of watching Ghost Adventures.
I have since lost interest in that show as it has become less about
hunting for ghosts and more about their audio detection devices such
as the “spirit box,” which can amazingly translate white noise
like “grrmphhxsskshhelkuyayt” into “kill you!” I have since
discovered a much more superior show, Finding Bigfoot.

The show follows the adventures of
three bigfoot nerds (including a man named Bobo) and a skeptical
female biologist as they travel the world trying to find hard
evidence of Bigfoot. But you don't have to watch the show--I'll just
summarize one, because they are all pretty much the same:

Opening stock
“preview” scene: video of a roaring beast that looks suspiciously
like a gorilla.

Cut to: The team
is in a car headed to a town hall meeting. Upon arrival, locals
relate their Bigfoot stories. The Bigfoot hunters then pick the
most credible sources from the meeting, jump back into the car, and
tear off to where the most impressive incident happened. There, the
eye witness demonstrates what he/she was doing and what he/she saw or
heard. Then the experts send Bobo to the exact spot of the Bigfoot
sighting. The witness then points out, “No, no, the creature was
much taller than that.” At this point, the experts then deem the
witness as extremely credible, since the measurements reported by the
witness concur almost exactly with other reports of the height and
breadth of a sasquatch (or “squatch,” to those in the know).

One time a witness described a series
of footprints where a Bigfoot had come through. The experts
recreated the footprints and decided that no human could possible
duplicate that gait. The female biologist, ever playing devil’s
advocate, quickly ran through the footprints demonstrating just the
opposite. Bobo said, “Yeah, but how far could you have kept up
that pace, huh?”

At this point the experts pick a spot
to stake out during the night. They separate into pairs and proceed
to make bigfoot calls hoping to attract one or two. The first night
usually ends in disappointment.

Next comes a commercial break including
Bigfoot trivia like:

“True or False. A bigfoot can run
up to 30 miles per hour.”

“True or False. A bigfoot can
swim.”

Amazingly, both of those statements are
true! Not sure how they figured it out, but I guess they timed Bobo
in a forty yard sprint and figured an animal twice his size can run
twice as fast.

Next one member of the team will spend
a few days by himself/herself in the woods in a solo field
investigation. This usually involves a scary encounter with a
raccoon or deer via night vision goggles. Meanwhile, the others
continue interviewing more witnesses.

Finally, the whole team spends another
night in the woods making Bigfoot calls and hitting trees with
baseball bats because bigfoots like sports (another true fact, you
heard it here first). Then they will stumble into an area where tree
branches have been mysteriously bent, which we learn is obviously
caused by a Bigfoot traipsing through the area. Then we reach the
startlingly climax where someone will suddenly say, “Stop!” or
“Ssshhhh! Did you hear that?” and cut to commercial.

After the commercial, we see everyone
looking around through night vision goggles which will display a
small blip in the distance. “Yep, that's Bigfoot,” or more
likely a raccoon, or a deer, or a jackalope. Sometimes they'll say,
“I heard it! There's definitely a squatch in the area!”
Amazingly, they never record the sounds.

In the end, they gather up in the dark
and assess the mission and congratulate themselves: “Well, there
was definitely a lot of activity in the area, and this mission was a
success!”

By contrast, perhaps that's where Ghost
Adventures succeeds: the ghost hunters realized after several
seasons that they needed the viewer to hear the sounds of ghosts, so
they came up with devices that would interpret the white noise for
us, while the Bigfoot crew just says, “Yessirree, we heard a lot of
‘squatches tonight! Trust us. Would Bobo lie?”

But I always have to stay up for the
ending, because I don’t want to miss when they actually capture a
Bigfoot on film.

4 comments:

That is too funny!!!! You can be my official reality (?????) show watcher as I have never watched any of it. Well...to be fair, I did try to watch Honey Boo Boo once to see what the fuss was about but I only lasted 5 minutes. I am seriously considering suing her on behalf of all hillbillies for defaming us. While I currently am keeping my hillbillyness well hidden, my relatives would agree that Honey Boo Boo and her trashy kinfolk are giving us a bad name. Yeah..even worse than being just called a hillbilly.

Sorry...I digress....I can see how you lost interest in the ghost adventures as how many times can you listen to white noise and NOT see something before it gets uninteresting.

As far as squatches (I am in the know) the program might gain a little watchablity to see what a guy with the name BoBo is about....and to figure out if indeed he would or wouldn't lie.

Be sure to let me know if they really find a squatch as I may not of tuned in yet.

Nobody can type on an ipad. Was scanning channels between NCAA games the other day, and ran across the search for sasquatch show. I thought you had simply made that up as a parody. In any case, your description was spot on (as we say in the U.K.); so much so that I just assumed I was watching a re-run of the show you had seen. But then I figured that they all essentially had to have the same theme. Odd how they know exactly when they see a sure sign of a squatch without ever having actuall run across one. JMM

About Me

I live in a small town in Texas. I am the real America. I wasn't born in the republic which means I'm not really Texan. I do have a pickup truck but since it's a Nissan, I'm still not considered Texan. I only drive it when no one is looking. I'm a man without a country and a man without a car. I'm an entrepreneur but not a good one as I recently had to close down the family restaurant. But that makes me an economic expert. I can seriously blame the restaurant's closing on Obama, Cheney, NAFTA, Cash for Clunkers, TARP and even Bernie Madoff who never spent millions in my restaurant. Not even a dime.